


And we'll conquer them all

by Kacka



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post-Season/Series 04, canonverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-09
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-25 17:47:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12041025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kacka/pseuds/Kacka
Summary: Clarke gets captured by Eligius, but she's not the only one.





	And we'll conquer them all

**Author's Note:**

> I saw [this tumblr post](http://the-rebelliousgirl.tumblr.com/post/165136043270/sly2o-at-this-point-im-assuming-the-bellarke) and went "who can I prompt this to" and then I was like oh wait I write fan fiction sometimes...

Clarke’s head is throbbing.

That’s the first thing she registers as she comes to, the dull pounding in the back of her skull that makes her eyes sting and her mind groggy. With one hand, she reaches back to probe gently at her skull, an examination she’s done plenty of times-- on other people. It’s tender to the touch, the constant ache replaced by piercing pain when her fingers graze the right spot.

She wants nothing more than to go back to sleep, but knowing that she probably has a concussion, she pushes herself to sit up slowly. It’s only then that she realizes the other implication of her head wound: that she’s been captured by Eligius.

Panic starts to claw at her throat, tempered only by the relief that Madi wasn’t with her when she went to scout the newcomers’ settlement. She’d stayed behind, hidden with the Rover. Clarke’s radio is missing, which doesn’t bode well for any attempts to claim that she’s alone in the world, but at least Madi isn’t their hostage.

Clarke, however, is.

Her hands aren’t bound and there are no chains holding her, but the cell she’s been put in is intensely isolating. It’s dark and cramped, and when she feels along the metal walls to peek through the bars on the door, the hall stretches as far as she can see with identical cells. This ship was made to imprison, she realizes. There’s little chance of escape.

Then again, Clarke had found a way out of Mount Weather, so long ago now. She won’t get anywhere if she doesn’t try.

Brute force won’t get her anywhere. As much as she wants to pound her fists against the door, to hurl herself against the walls until they give, she knows that’s not the way to go about it. She feels around on the floor of her cell to see if there’s anything of use. Her next thought is to feel for hinges on the door, to no avail. She’s sealed up tight.

She does let her fist fall against the door now, just once, the rattle of the metal reverberating through her injured skull until she has to back away, clutching her head in her hands.

“It’s no use.”

A gravelly voice floats through the bars on the door. She peers through them again but sees no one.

It must be another prisoner.

“Trust me, whoever you are. If there was a way out, I would have found it by now.”

Clarke squeezes her eyes shut and sees Bellamy’s face swimming before her. He’s always there when she closes them, never far from her. To her mind, the stranger’s voice sounds like him, but it’s been six years since she’s heard the voice of any man. And she only knew him for a handful of months. It’s wishful thinking, though imagining that it’s him speaking to her brings her some modicum of comfort.

“If I don’t even try to escape, then they’ve already won,” she grits out, taking inventory of the rest of herself. They’ve found all the weapons she’d hid on her person, even the tiny blade she tucks into her bra. She doesn’t want to imagine how they found that one. “What do they want with me?”

“That depends,” answers the voice after a long silence. “What do you have of value to them? What do you know?”

Clarke purses her lips, considering. “I think it’s safe to say I’m the foremost expert on Eden.”

“Eden? Is that what you call it?”

“Seemed appropriate.” She sighs, leaning back against the wall and letting her head hang forward. “The one spot of green I’ve found among the wasteland.”

The prisoner grunts. “How’d you survive the death wave?”

“Just lucky, I guess. How did you end up in here?”

“Just unlucky, I guess.”

So they’re both playing it close to the vest. Clarke can’t blame him. She knows nothing of this prisoner, if he even is one and not some underhanded interrogator Eligius sent to find out what she knows. She refuses to tell him anything of Madi, of nightblood, of the bunker. Not until she knows the other cards on the table.

“Are we the only prisoners?” She asks. There’s another long silence as he decides whether to answer.

“There are others,” he says eventually. “We were captured together and separated. I think-- I think some are dead now. But others knew things, about technology or-- they were useful to them. I haven’t seen anyone but the Eligius guards in a long, long time.”

“I haven’t seen other human beings since before the death wave,” she lies. But she had been on her own long enough that when she adds, “I know what it’s like.” She doesn’t feel as if she’s really misleading.

“No one else?” He asks sharply.

Clarke worries her lip.

“Not a soul.”

There’s a loud clang, the same as the one her fist made when it hit the door.

“What was that?”

“There were supposed to be more survivors,” he grits out. She wonders how hard he hit his walls. Whether his hand is bleeding. “Twelve hundred of them. I thought maybe they’d come for us.”

Clarke freezes, every muscle in her body tensing. “How do you know about that?”

“I used to be Skaikru,” he says, rough. Clarke’s heart stops beating. “I guess I am again,” he adds with a snort.

She doesn’t move, doesn’t dare to hope.

“Bellamy?”

The name is out of her mouth before she can properly contain it. She goes over to the door and curls her fingers around the bars, pressing her face up against it. If only she could see him, could--

“Clarke?”

His voice is sandpaper, wearing away at the years between them, at the walls she’s tried to build around herself. A hand-- dirty and, yes, bleeding, appears between the bars of the next cell over and a strangled sob escapes her lips. She’s reaching for him before her mind even tells her to move, her breathing ragged as they clutch each other tightly.

“How--”

“You know how.”

His hand spasms, holding tighter to her. “The bunker?”

“Buried. The others?”

“Raven and Monty, at least, I think are alive.”

“Murphy is a cockroach. Not even the end of the world can kill him.”

“Despite how many people have idly thought about trying.” It’s a bad joke, the worst, and it makes tears well up in her eyes. “Echo wouldn’t go down without a fight. Or Harper. Or Emori,” he adds when she doesn’t say anything.

“You made it to space,” she says at last. “You-- I hoped, but--”

“We made it. Thanks to you.” His voice has taken on a different kind of hoarseness, no longer defeat and dehydration but raw emotion making it difficult for him to speak. “Clarke, I thought you were--”

He breaks off and Clarke slides her hand as far as she can reach, until they’re both gripping each other’s forearms, still clinging for dear life. His hand is rough and cold but otherwise exactly as she remembers it. It’s almost terrifying, the voice at the back of her mind telling her that this is all the head wound, that she’s hallucinating him like she had back in those first weeks after Praimfiya when she was so sick, that he can’t really be here with her.

But his grip on her is almost painful and she relishes in it, letting it ground her to the fact that this is reality. It’s really happening.

“I’m not,” she says, not cruel enough to make him finish his sentence. “I’m fine. I mean, I’m a prisoner, but all things considered--”

He gives her a shaky laugh. “We need to get out of here.”

“I thought you said there was no use trying.”

“If anyone could break us out with sheer force of will, Princess--”

Clarke bites her lip, her nails digging into his skin. He waits her out.

“I never thought I’d be so glad to hear that stupid nickname.”

His thumb sweeps across her skin, soothing and reassuring. “I never thought I’d get to say it again.” He pauses. “Clarke, I’m so--”

“Don’t. Don’t apologize, Bellamy.”

“But--”

“We both made it. That’s what counts.”

“I’m pretty sure subjecting you to six years of isolation counts for something,” he mutters. Clarke squeezes his arm again, feeling his veins under her fingers. Veins full of life.

“I subjected myself to it. And if I hadn’t, you guys wouldn’t have made it to the ring. It sucks, but it’s what had to happen.”

She pauses. She wants desperately to tell him about Madi, but she doesn’t know what other ears might be on them. They’re already revealing too much, showing Eligius how much he means to her. She’ll never forget ALIE’s voice coming out of her mother’s mouth, _“Start with Bellamy Blake.”_

If she could make herself let go of him, she would. She doesn’t want to have to choose between protecting him and protecting Madi. She doesn’t know what she would do.

“There’s more you’re not telling me,” he says in a low voice. Understanding.

“I’ll catch you up once we’re out of here.”

At some point, they both sink to the floor. Clarke’s arm starts to ache from the awkward angle but she keeps her grasp on his hand, refusing to give him up again for as trivial a thing as comfort. She falls asleep like that and he wakes her every couple of hours or so, making her check in with him so they know her concussion isn’t damaging her brain. The fourth time he wakes her, he gives her hand one quick squeeze and retracts his own.

“Someone’s coming.”

Clarke hears the brisk footsteps slow before they halt in front of her cell. She looks up at the Eligius guard standing before her, defiance at the ready, and tenses.

“Echo.”

“Echo?” Bellamy repeats. She hears him scrambling to his feet and slowly finds her own as Echo impassively unlocks Clarke’s cell. “Where’d you get the uniform?”

“Killed the guard who wore it. Learned that trick in Mount Weather.”

As soon as his cell is open, he’s moving to Clarke’s side, pulling her into his chest and carefully cradling the back of her head. She lets herself sink into him for the briefest of moments, not nearly as long as she’d like, her tears wet on the skin of his neck. He's thinner than he used to be, his hair shaggy and his facial hair unkempt, but the feeling of his arms holding her, of his nose in her hair, the feel of his heartbeat thrumming beneath her fingers, is all so _Bellamy_  she never wants to let him go. 

“We have to move,” Echo says, no friendliness in her tone. Then again, that’s Echo as Clarke remembers her. She would expect nothing more. “Raven gave us a seven-minute window.”

“Raven is behind this?” Clarke says, making herself pull away from Bellamy and following Echo down the mazelike corridors.

“What took her so long?” Bellamy grumbles.

She wants to reach for his hand again but knows they need to be ready in case they come upon real Eligius guards. Even so, his warmth at her back is enough to fill the gaping hole inside of her. From the way he sticks closer than her own shadow, she thinks he feels the same.

“We’ve been on the ground less than a week. This was as fast as she could get her plan in motion.” She slants a look toward Clarke. “It will be a better plan now that we have someone who knows the terrain.”

“It’s nothing like you remember,” Clarke agrees.

They’re quiet for a moment, the only sound their hurried footfalls, and then Echo says, “I should not be surprised you survived Praimfiya, Wanheda. But I am glad.”

“That’s surprise enough,” Bellamy snorts, his hands coming to Clarke’s shoulders as she stumbles, steadying her. She smiles to herself.

“Thanks, I think. I’m glad too.”

They slow as they near a doorway, beyond which lies bright sunshine. Hope.

“Okay,” Echo whispers, scoping out the situation. “This is the dangerous part. We have to stick together.”

Clarke lets herself find Bellamy’s hand in the darkness, brushing hers against it simply to remind herself he’s there beside her. Living, breathing, ready to fight by her side.

“Sounds like a plan,” he says, taking her hand again and lacing their fingers together.

 _Together_ , Clarke thinks, and holds on tight.

“Yeah," she breathes. "Sounds good to me."


End file.
